26. According to your mother, you look like Tim Conway.

25. You like to be held. If we want you awake and not eating, we have to put you in the bouncy chair; otherwise you cuddle up and go to sleep almost instantly.

23. Your nickname before you were born was "Squiggy" (see item #2).

24. Your nickname now is "Hootie." You make the funniest little hoots. Hooot!

19. You don't like to open your eyes very much. When you do, it always seems like the left eye is open wider than the right. In fact, when you were born it was a while before I ever saw your right eye at all.

20. You don't like being unwrapped. You have the most adorable way of flailing your arms, desperately reaching out to try to hold onto something that's not there. It must feel so frightening after being in the womb for nine months. So it's always a huge relief for both of us when I finish the diaper change or whatever and I can get you all tightly burrito'd again. (Yes, I realize that this is probably the same with every other baby on the planet. Cut me some slack here, I'm a new dad!)

21. When your fussing progresses to a full-on cry, you do the same little quivering-chin thing that Ellie did when she was your age. It has this magical way of flooding the onlooker with extreme pity. :-) But it is so endearing. (Man, I've gotta get video footage of it next time!)

22. You're sleepy pretty much all the time. Even when it's time to eat. Daddy learned not to let you have your pacifier unless you've just eaten, because if you get it, you're likely to drift off to sleep again, and not wake up again until you're a little wild with hunger.

18. My, but do you ever like to spit up! Dr. Lee tells us you've already lost more than 5% of your body weight, and as the Primary Caretaker Of All Substances Exiting Your Body I'm not surprised by this in the least! (But don't worry anyone, the weight loss is perfectly normal.)

14. Your full name is Joanna Faith Ragsdale. (Well, I mean, of course you know that, by now, but the other people reading this as it happens, way back in the year 2006, didn't know it yet.)

15. You were born at 12:55 pm, Pacific Daylight Time. (On what date? On your birthday, duh!)

16. You were 19.5 inches long.

17. You have a little red "stork bite" under your left eyebrow.

13. You took to a bottle right away, easy as pie.

Just when Mama was about to feed you this evening, she was suddenly stricken by the most severely excruciating pain she had ever felt in her entire life. There was no way she was going to be able to do it, but all the same, you kept getting hungrier and hungrier. So Daddy asked the nurses for a bottle of infant formula and you gulped an ounce of it right down and settled down contentedly to sleep.

Now Mama is feeling much better than she was then. With any luck we won't have to use any more of this formula, but it's nice to know that you're so wonderfully adaptable when we need you to be.

Joanna, I think you're a wonderful little girl and I'm honored that I get to be your daddy your whole life. It's an amazing feeling just to be able to provide for you and satisfy you.

One other thing. Today we brought your big sister Ellie to meet you. She said, after much prompting from us: "baby Jo-nan-na!" Tomorrow I hope she will get to "hold" you. I'm so excited to see how you two will get along with each other.

12. You can be rather a talkative sleeper. (Refer to item #10.)

Dear Joanna,

Here is what you looked like when you were not yet one day old. Sleeping peacefully:



And here you are with your already-tired mom, last night, at 12 hours of age:


You may get a kick out of viewing that one side-by-side with this one of your big sister.

Joanna, we will keep you. You're a beauty.

Love,
Daddy

8. You have a very round face, and a dimpled chin, and amazingly long and flexible toes.

9. You really love to eat.

10. You make really cute little noises.

Hi everyone reading this at home. :-) We'll get ya some pictures before long... right now we're just impatiently waiting for the nursery to hurry up and finish whatever it is they have to do. Joanna's been alive almost four hours now and has only gotten to spend 30 minutes of that with her mama! Hopefully they'll be bringing her in soon and we can actually bond and stuff... and then, you know, pictures. :-)

3. You came out weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces.

4. You have a nice full head of hair.

5. You were such a good girl while the nurses were doing all the weird things to you that they had to do. In fact, you were so content that you just kept drifting off to sleep and waking up again.

6. Each time you would start to fuss, Daddy would start to sing to you, and you would just quiet right down again.

7. You're absolutely perfect in every way.

Dear Joanna,

This is your father. Your mother and I are waiting in the Labor & Delivery ward at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California. It's 11:15 am, and if all goes well, we only have a few more hours to go before we can finally meet you!

It's an amazing time right now, not knowing anything about you and poised right on the edge of this great big journey that we're all about to go on together.

Well, we do know two things about you.

1. You are almost certainly smaller than your big sister Ellie was at birth! She was "9 pounds, 10 ouches" according to your Mama.

2. Whenever Mama stops moving around (like when she goes to bed at night), it's suddenly party time for you! You don't kick as much or as hard as Ellie did, but you sure like to swish around a lot!

I can't wait to learn items number three through 1,000.

Mama's got her IV in now and we're just sitting here, listening to the sound of your heart beating on a little speaker. Mama is hungry.

Love,
Daddy